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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530292">Let's Roll</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendoftheJabberwock/pseuds/friendoftheJabberwock'>friendoftheJabberwock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Thelma and Louise (1991)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, three canonical events from Louise's POV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:20:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530292</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendoftheJabberwock/pseuds/friendoftheJabberwock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Louise always took care of Thelma. She thought she always would.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thelma Dickinson/Louise Sawyer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Let's Roll</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Trigger warnings: rape and attempted rape (part 1), suicide (part 3), and some language. All events are canonical and non-graphic. I wouldn't have written it if I didn't think it served the greater purpose of the story, but take care of yourselves!</p><p>And what, you ask, is the greater purpose of the story? One of my favorite aspects of the movie is how Thelma and Louise's relationship shifts from Louise as the leader to the two women as equals. I found myself exploring that evolving dynamic through a series of three vignettes of canonical events told from Louise's perspective. Here they are.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I</p><p>Louise hears cries in the parking lot – Thelma is begging, pleading, and Louise is running as fast as she can before the full reality of what's happening even hits her. When it does she no longer knows whether she's crying or Thelma is – reality warps into a series of snapshots, and she's terrified that she'll be too late to stop Thelma from learning what she learned long ago.</p><p>Thelma is a silhouette, forced against the trunk of a sedan by a man with one hand raised to slap her and the other clawing at her skirt.</p><p>
  <em>Louise is thrown on the hood of her own broken-down car, and the heat from the engine is still enough to burn her. She howls, but there's no one along this flat Texas roadway to hear.</em>
</p><p>But there's someone to hear Thelma. Louise is searching desperately for something large and heavy, anything, when she remembers the gun. She reaches for it and the touch of cool steel cuts through her panic. She knows what to do now.</p><p>That sonofabitch is tearing at Thelma's underwear now, a nice new pair she bought at the mall during their last trip there. Louise can only see his back, but she can picture his face exactly even so.</p><p>
  <em>Louise fights, kicks, scratches at the bastard's face, but those icy eyes are still mocking, hungry – no longer human. The thing on top of her is a wildcat, not a man.</em>
</p><p>Louise feels like she's watching herself – watching her being raped alongside Thelma, watching herself pull out the gun, watching herself and Harland. Watching as her rage and fear boil and then boil over.</p><p>No one ever lays a finger on her Thelma.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>II</p><p>
  <em>"Want anything?"</em>
</p><p>Louise wants a whole lot – to start with, her life savings. Next she wants to kick a certain grifter out of a bright blue convertible, preferably at highway speed – or maybe to just avoid the whole mess by finding the nearest mad scientist who could turn back time and put a bullet back in a gun. But that wouldn't solve anything, since Thelma would still be –</p><p>Damn Thelma. Damn Thelma and those innocent doe eyes that after all these years of being pushed and pulled by Darryl still couldn't see the grime in people until it literally slapped her in the face.</p><p>Louise sees two women through a store window – aging, slowing down, but with the look of something shared that binds them to each other and the will to carry on. Just like Thelma and herself. They are inextricably linked – a part of each other, and nothing can change that. Not even Louise's periodic urges to knock some sense into Thelma, or regrets about a life she knows she can never live.</p><p>She recalls how Jimmy had told her many a time to slow down – sometimes he meant her driving, sometimes the way she wanted to live her life. That was Jimmy, for whom life was a slow and sauntering bluegrass song. For years she'd played along, and sometimes wished she didn't; now she couldn't, but wished she still did. But Jimmy is the past, now, and her life is moving ahead – accelerating, even. But accelerating towards what?</p><p>
  <em>Drive! Drive the car! </em>
</p><p>No more time to think – time instead to speed up some more. The Thunderbird's wheels spin and spit dust, and all the while Thelma is still screaming in her ear. Again Louise doesn't stop to think why Thelma needs her. She just goes right on ahead and does as she asks.</p><p>
  <em>Oh shit. Oh shit, Thelma!</em>
</p><p>Thelma is racing down some unknown road – and Louise may be driving, but she still feels like she's scrambling just to keep up.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>III</p><p>She wants to apologize – for shooting Harland, for dragging Thelma along on his whole crazy ride. For failing her. For everything.</p><p>But Thelma simply looks right at her and smiles. Louise just about loses it right then and there – for the first time Thelma is well and truly all grown up, and Louise had hardly noticed. She can't sort out whether to laugh or bawl her eyes out. When Thelma leans over and kisses her she stops trying, and settles for kissing her back – because why not.</p><p>Because she loves Thelma more than anyone else in the whole wide world, and because they're about to go flying into the Grand Canyon together. Because somewhere along the way Thelma stopped following and started leading. Because she's scared – real scared – but Thelma's not. Because it's so <em>good. </em></p><p>And in that moment she wants nothing more than to lie down in the Mexican desert beneath a great starry sky with her head resting in Thelma's lap. But this is neither the time nor the place, and there never will be a time or a place. All she can do now is reach out for Thelma's hand and try to push all those thoughts through her dusty fingertips.</p><p>Thelma will understand. This is how it's meant to be, after all – just the two of them, suspended, infinite, forever.</p><p>It's time to go.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Your feedback/concrit is more than welcome!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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